


Two Inquisitors' Legacies

by Bill_Custard



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Divine Leliana (Dragon Age), Dragon Age: Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon DLC, Elves, M/M, Mages, Mages (Dragon Age), The Chantry (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 16:44:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20781809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bill_Custard/pseuds/Bill_Custard
Summary: Sylvas Lavellan has never been as shaken by anything before as by what he found out about Ameridan today. Dorian has to try and talk to him so he doesn't freeze to death, sitting outside and thinking about how fucked up chantry and elven history is.





	Two Inquisitors' Legacies

"Someone has to go talk to him." Varric had been watching the inquisitor, opening the door just a little and letting in bitterly cold air. Dorian shuddered. Even here, in the hut with a fire going, it was almost unbearable. Tree houses. The floor was cold, there was wind howling through the cracks in the walls, and even his coat and an additional blanket didn’t keep the cold out. 

Dorian tried to look uninvolved. He knew it would be him. It should be him. But what was there to say? 

“At least try convincing him of putting on some warm clothes or coming inside again, Sparkler. Wouldn’t exactly be a great end for our inquisitor to die from frostbite.”

Dorian nodded. He still felt a little dazed from what they had learned a couple of hours ago. Mixed with the intense alertness and fear accompanying the expectance of fighting an ancient ice dragon tomorrow, it made him feel cold to the bone. Even if it hadn’t been cold outside, he’d probably still be shivering. How did Sylvas do it?

He took the inquisitor’s coat. It was, of course, made from the finest materials in Sylvas’ elegant style, great bear pelt and dragon skin. Before opening the door, Dorian followed an intuition and grabbed one of the bottles of brandy that he had yet left unopened. Drinking the night before a dragon fight was probably not a good idea. However, dying from the cold while looking ponderingly into the distance was probably worse.

Sylvas was still in his armor. It might have been warm enough for walking through the Frostback during the day while moving around, but now, at night, after releasing Hakkon, sitting precariously close to the edge, his arms hanging over the balustrade – Dorian was wondering if he had maybe already died from the cold. The way he was hanging there like a sack of potatoes was certainly supporting that theory.

Dorian sighed, trying to ignore the slight feeling of his stomach dropping when he approached the edge. He didn’t even ask Sylvas, knowing he’d decline, and just put his cloak around his shoulders. It was better than nothing. Then he sat down next to him, careful not to look down, careful to test if it was really, as far as it could be, safe.

Sylvas didn’t look at him. His eyes were closed, his forehead was laying on the banister. Dorian saw, through the dust and blood still clinging to his face, a very distinguishable clean line from the eye he cold see to his chin. He felt ashamed, like intruding into something that wasn’t his business. He had never seen Sylvas cry. It just wasn’t his way. At times, he had even wondered if he was physically able to do it. And now…

Sylvas moved, sighed, his breath forming a cloud in the cold air. He shuddered and pulled his cloak around him. He pulled his hood up, then he leaned against Dorian’s shoulder, burying his face in Dorian’s cloak. Dorian pulled Sylvas back a couple of feet, until, to his relieve, he felt the hut’s wall against his back, and put his arms around Sylvas, covering both of them with his blanket. 

“It is rare for me, I know, but I am at a bit of a loss for words”, Dorian said, trying to warm his amatus by rubbing his back. He felt Sylvas’ arms tighten around his chest, and surprisingly enough, even dozens and dozens of feet above the ground, they had their usual effect – Dorian felt safe. How was he still the one being comforted right now, when it was Sylvas who had been shaken to his core today…?

“There’s just really nothing I could say in this situation.”

“No,” Sylvas’ muffled voice agreed.

“I did bring brandy though. Even if it doesn’t help, it might at least numb the cold.”

Dorian felt Sylvas shake in his arms. For a moment, he was afraid he might be crying – he wasn’t sure how to even react to such a level of vulnerability from the strongest man he knew. But then Sylvas looked up at him, and even though his eyes were red, he was laughing. 

“Oh, Dorian,” he chuckled, “You always bring the right solution to the table, don’t you.”

“As long as the solution is brandy, yes.” 

The inquisitor laughed and put his gloved hand around Dorian’s neck, pulling him into a kiss that felt hungry and just the tiniest bit confused. Sylvas’ lips were cold, and Dorian tasted salt and iron. Still – he was filled with a sudden warmth of relieve. After today, some – admittedly not even small – part of him had feared the elf wouldn’t want him anymore. He was, after all, human. A follower of the chantry, even if it wasn’t the one responsible for erasing Ameridan’s legacy. He had been afraid that this might have been it, the reason for Sylvas to reconsider being in a relationship with a human from Tevinter. He would have understood – which had made his fear infinitely worse.

Dorian held the inqisitor’s hooded face between his hands, looking into his iridescent green eyes. He wiped away the lines his tears had left on his cheeks with his thumbs, then he traced the vallaslin on his cheekbones, the way he had done a hundred times before. This time, it felt different. 

“Dirthamen, keeper of secrets.” Dorian whispered, now tracing the lines on Sylvas’ nose, “Ameridan – he had the same markings.” 

Sylvas nodded. “In some ways, it was like looking into a mirror. A terrifying mirror.” He closed his eyes and leaned against Dorian’s touch. In the distance, they could hear the dragon’s roar, faintly, almost completely drowned out by the wind. “If I die tomorrow, fighting the same beast that he did,” Sylvas continued, his voice almost a whisper, “What legacy will I leave behind? Will I just be another elven mage, forgotten, a tool in the chantry’s toolbox to oppress my people? In a hundred years… Will anyone still remember that I was a mage? That I was not just the inquisitor, but that I tried so hard to champion the mages’ freedom, to fight for elves, all elves, not just the Dalish… Will anyone remember? How can I still believe anything I did, anything I do, will ever change a thing?”

And there they were, tears, getting soaked up by Dorian’s gloves. Sylvas angrily wiped them away, leaving Dorian’s hands to warming his back again, and unscrewed the brandy. He took several large gulps, then passed the bottle to Dorian.

“I will be forgotten. History is written by the victors, and we are never going to be the victors.” On his face anger, frustration, and resignation were mixing. Not a combination Dorian had ever seen on this particular face before. 

“You don’t know that,” Dorian said, also drinking now, though a bit more carefully, “You changed things. Leliana will change things. And Briala, especially since she's doing it together with Celene. And then you also changed me, amatus. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

The faintest smile formed around Sylvas’ eyes. “I guess it is. Still. People are going to forget you as well, ma vhenan. The inquisitor being with a future magister from Tevinter… It doesn’t fit their story. We’ll probably end up just like Ameridan and Telana. People might now our names… and everything else will be written by the chantry.”

“However, there is a certain difference between our group and Ameridan’s,” Dorian said, passing the bottle back.

Sylvas looked at him expectantly. His eyes glittered in a way that made him already look tipsy. No wonder, since he’d been sitting in the cold for hours, not having eaten after the day they’d had, fighting and learning incredible things about the first inquisition.

“Our trusty dwarf’s records about us are going to sell pretty well.” Dorian finished. It hadn’t even been intended as a joke, but Sylvas snorted in laughter anyways. 

“I love that," he laughed, "The legacy of inquisitor Lavellan: Written by a dwarf who also writes adventure novels and smutty romance stories. It’s perfect. Very us.”

Dorian chuckled. “His books are great though, you know that, right?”

“Of course they are. That’s why it’s so amazing. Because written by him, being an elven mage is going to be very romantic. And the love story might just be one of the most interesting bits. Also, people are going to be able to understand the book. Unlike the epic poems written about Ameridan.”

Dorian pulled Sylvas into another kiss. This time, it tasted like brandy. For some reason, he had said the right thing. It had worked.

“You know what I’d like to do?,” Dorian asked.

Sylvas looked at him, one brow lifted.

“I want to take you inside, undress you, clean you up and then… straight to bed of course, we have to kill a dragon tomorrow.”

Sylvas grinned, biting his lip. “The others are in the hut, aren’t they.”

“Yes, but… Being the inquisitor, you could just send them outside. We wouldn’t want our legacy to contain too many first hand witnessed pornographic scenes.”

Sylvas chuckled. “There are other huts up here. They’ll survive giving us a bit of privacy, I’m quite sure of it.”

“They will.”

And he pulled Sylvas up by the hand and into the hut, to have what might just be their last night on this side of the veil.


End file.
